The photograph was taken at a butterfly house in Quezon Memorial Circle. A high concentration of subjects always increases the chance of getting a desired shot. It did for Ding. His tip: use a zoom lens so as not to disturb the subject, which in this case was resting on a root of a vine. Enhancing the dreaminess of the background were his expert combination of focal distance (150mm), shallow DOF (f/5/6) and overexposure (+1.0EV).
Camera: Olympus E-510, 1/30s, f/5.6, 150mm, ISO 100, +1.0EV, Flash: 8, software: Picasa 3.0
To go to Ding's winning photo in flickr, click here.
======================================================
Ding Fuellos
Advocacy, activism and commitment can define a man. Take it from this week’s winner, Ding Fuellos. A trained psychologist, Ding traces his continuing work on social development from being a pioneering member of the National Anti-Poverty Commission and Presidential Commission to Fight Poverty to managing a Congressional Fellowship program for young Muslim leaders in Mindanao. Much like his flickr and blog name Inkblots, which is a take of the Rorschach's Inkblots Test, Ding projects purposeful meanings to different people, be they the policy makers and aid agencies whom he consults for, the ordinary man whom he serves, or his family of two boys whom he adores. He also writes with fervor and his piece Tungo Sa Pagbabanyuhay in his eponymous blog garnered the Grand Prize of the Wika 2007 Blog Writing Contest.
Photography ran in Ding’s family. His brother lent him his first camera in college, a Canon AE-1, and like most people, he used it first to document social events. Even when he started working, the borrowed camera was his companion until the 200mm lens got molds. His sister, now a nun, was also into black and white photography, developing her films in a darkroom on her own. She gave him her Pentax film camera which he used until the lens was damaged in 1995. Since then, he contented himself with a 135 Minolta point and shoot.
When photography turned digital, he bought a Olympus Stylus 410 which he used for the early photos in his flickr stream. He has then turned to dSLR and is planning to supplement his Olympus E-510’s two kit lenses — the 14-42 mm (suitable for macros) and 40-150mm – with a 300mm lens.
Unsurprisingly, his role model in photography is his sister. She continues to dispense candid critiques on his photos, advising him on what is mediocre and what is effective. Portraits and street photojournalism were her forte and he naturally is drawn to them especially in his developmental advocacies. He challenges himself to capture the punch of emotions, always a tangibly difficult element, much more fleeting than other the subjects he prefers like nature or landscapes.
His pictures may not reveal this but he has no formal training in photography. He is not into photography as a career yet although he might entertain the notion if he found time to attend classes and acquire proper equipment. Just last month, one foundation offered him a photo documentation project all over the country but he declined because he felt he is still unprepared. Always the fair man!
He offers three other photos to distill his spirit as a photographer:
Pure? Yes. They are barely touched by software. Simple? Not so. At the risk of psychoanalyzing the psychologist, the photographs reflect the psyche of a man driven who sees beyond the mundane. Ordinary lives, after all, are worth advocating for.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
== Written by Farl.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment